The drive letter assignment on which Windows is installed *must* always
remain the same, the only way to change that is by reinstalling Windows,
so in your case the installation must keep drive letter D.
As for your boot.ini question, first confirm that you are in fact
booting on the SATA drive, you can use the Disk Management tool to
verify which is the "System" drive or you can use the SET command at a
Command Prompt to see the information. Of course, if you have
disconnected or disabled the old drive in the BIOS then you are certain
that you are booting on the new SATA drive.
You have to remove the invalid line in the [operating systems] section
of the boot.ini file and you have to make sure that the default= line in
the [boot loader] loader section points to the right disk and partition.
You can use the MSCONFIG utility and have it check and remove
invalid boot paths. Or, if you are certain of the ARC path you can edit
the file manually, to be certain you can add a descriptive word to the
lines in the [operating systems] section and you will then know which
line is the proper one to use. The stuff between the quotation marks is
the descriptive text that you see on the screen when the computer
boots, for example you could add Line 1 & Line 2 to the descriptions:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Line 1 Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Line 2 Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /usepmtimer
The ARC path is the in the first part of the line, note that in your
case the only difference is in the rdisk(x) number, it is either 0 or 1:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
The ARC path at the default= line has to match the ARC path on whichever
line you use to boot Windows. For example, if the computer boots with
the "Line 2..." then the boot.ini file would look like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Line 2 Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /usepmtimer
John
John,
Thanks for the info, it loads, but it wants me to still select. I guess
the letter D will still remain as the drive letter. How do I remove the
boot question, and just load XP?
Here is the boot file
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /usepmtimer
Thanks
Tim Carr
:
Tim 489 wrote:
1- The drive must have an active partition that was formated with a
Windows NT type operating system (which XP is).
2- The files boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM and ntldr must be located in the
root of the active partition.
3- The ARC path in the boot.ini file must point to the proper disk and
partition to where the operating system's files are located (the
System32 folder).
So, to boot with the SATA drive:
1- Use the Disk Manager and make sure that the disk has a partition
marked as active. If the drive was formated with a non-NT operating
system the use of the FIXBOOT command in the Recovery Console will write
a proper boot sector to the active partition.
2- Copy the files boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM and ntldr from the old drive
to the root of the active partition on the new SATA drive. COPY the
files, do not move them! That way you can still boot from the first
disk if things don't work as expected!
3- Edit the boot.ini file so that the ARC path matches the actual
location of the System32 folder. Post the contents of your boot.ini
file here if you need further advice on the ARC path.
John
